Larry S (lasmoak)

The one that made movies fun again, and forever changed how the movie business works. Does anybody really care about "Annie Hall," the flick that beat this for Best Picture in 1977? I though not...

This was Leone's masterpiece. Yes, there are some holes in the plot's logic, as this is almost a pure exercise in style over substance, but it was HIS style. The substance might not be all that deep, but neither was it very deep in a lot of John Ford's work, and nobody talks bad about "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." Eastwood had mastered this character by now (if it is indeed the same character - that could be the subject of another very interesting debate...), and we began to see here his mastery of gaze and expression that he uses to this day. Wallach's role is a bit more than comic relief, and the perfect hyper foil to Eastwood's silent understatement. This is one of the greatest films ever made (in my humble opinion), but for altogether different reasons than the more typical "great film." What it boils down to is this: it's just SO DAMN COOL, how can you NOT love this stuff??